It was horrific. One fell fifty feet from the roller coaster as it reached the top of the loop. Two fused together and perished inside the Tunnel of Love. An employee inside a mascot suit suffocated. Fifteen became decapitated as a roller coaster ride came to a stop. One found trapped, dismembered, and close to death inside the house of mirrors, the remainder of their skin covered in bite marks that resembled those of human teeth - that one was his daughter.

Five months had passed since this tragedy occurred. Doctor Evergreen could still recall the sight of seventeen year old Abigail lying on the hospital bed. It was his first time seeing her in years since he and his wife divorced, and what a sight it was: his daughter, hooked up to a heart monitor with bloody, bandaged stumps replacing where both her arms and legs used to be. She was just one of the countless number of victims located in the children's amusement park during that fateful weekend in August, and so far, despite her fatal injuries, was the only survivor who currently sane enough to clearly recall what had transpired without going into a panicked trance. Just thinking about it brought tears to his eyes even now. They blurred the text of the document he was currently attempting to type until the words he had written became indecipherable. He stopped, removed his glasses, and wiped the tears away with his white sleeve.

He was fortunate that this job at the SCP Foundation gave him a high enough salary that he was able to pay for Abigail's prosthetics, with some help from his friend Doctor Gears. The agency had also paid the media a generous sum of money to keep quiet about the whole matter. It was now classified information. All the public knew about the incident was that the park was officially closed for good.

Such a shame this horrendous event happened. Many children loved going to this park, including Abigail when she was younger. With a sigh, he saved his work and pushed himself away from the desk, but continued to stare down at the papers littered across it. He desperately wanted his daughter back. She had come along with the Mobile Task Force this morning simply to point out the location where she had last seen her best friend, who had been accompanying her when the tragedy struck and hadn't yet been found. It had been a few hours since the team left with her, yet to Evergreen it felt like an eternity. The doctor didn't know how long the search would last, but he hoped and prayed that it wouldn't be much longer.

As if some unknown deity heard his prayer, the door to the room he was in opened and in stepped Agent Ace. Doctor Evergreen smiled upon seeing him. Ace had been accompanying Abigail during the search. If he was back, then that must mean Abigail was too!

"Ace! It's good to see that you're back!" The doctor stood up and walked around to the front of his desk. He clasped his hands behind his back and for a moment peered around the Agent's shoulder to try and look behind him, eager to get a glimpse of his daughter again. However, she didn't appear to be with him."Where's my Abigail?"

Ace merely kept his head down, not saying a word as a few other fellow members of the Task Force entered the room behind him. All of them wore the same solemn expression on their faces.

"Stephen…" Ace paused for a moment, hesitating before finishing his sentence. His voice was hushed when he spoke, as if he knew how much his words would hurt before they left his mouth. "...you're daughter… didn't make it."

Slowly, Doctor Evergreen's hopeful smile disappeared. "...What?"

"S-she wandered off. She was heading into the Red Zone," Ace continued. "We couldn't follow her." The Agent dared to lift his head, a sincere, apologetic look in his eyes as he stared at the doctor. "...I'm sorry."

Evergreen's eyes widened. At first, he didn't believe Ace's words. He had just gotten Abigail back after so long. There was absolutely no way that she could be-… But after a moment, a mixture of shock and rage became visible in the doctor's hazel irises. Hands clenched into fists, he stormed over to the shorter man.

"She wandered off... and none of you did anything?!" Without warning, he tightly grabbed hold of the Ace's shirt and wrenched him close. The agent's eyes widened at the sudden change in the doctor's behavior and he began to stammer.

"W-we tried!"

"Like hell you did!" Evergreen shook the agent for a moment before glancing at the other men in the room with them. "My daughter would still be here with you all if you 'tried'!"

"I-It was the music, Stephen! The music!" Ace was doing his best to keep calm as he spoke, although it was quite clear to everyone present that he was failing miserably at it. He was well aware of Doctor Evergreen's unpredictable nature; it was a result of years of accumulated stress and trauma caused by working with multiple dangerous SCPs in this facility, and now that his daughter had finally come back into his life the doctor seemed even more volatile than ever. "D-don't you remember the file?! 'Should music or piping be heard from within-'" Ace yelped when Doctor Evergreen suddenly gripped tighter and brought him so close that their noses were almost touching.

"I know! I've read the damn thing countless times since the incident!" Evergreen barked. He lifted his head and glared at the other men once more. Each one seemed like they wanted to say something yet couldn't find the right words, or were too startled by what was currently going on to even talk. Their apologetic faces sickened him. "You all had your protective earplugs! At least one of you could've gone after her! Why-" He abruptly ceased talking before he could finish his sentence, eyes widening as he realized something. Without warning, he released Agent Ace before falling to his knees. "Oh who the hell am I kidding?!" His hands flew to his head and tightly gripped his hair, voice suddenly sounding as if it were on the verge of tears. "None of you understand! I'm practically the only married man in this damn room!"

A moment of hesitation passed before one of the men silently walked over to Doctor Evergreen and bent down next to him, draping an arm over the mourning scientist. With tears in his eyes, the doctor glanced up at the soldier. Seconds ticked by before Evergreen sighed and finally stood back up, lifting his glasses and wiping away the tears. "...Ace, may you and I speak in private?" he asked, speaking much more calmly than before.

The agent nodded his head in reply before turning to the other men and beckoning them out. He did not turn back to face Doctor Evergreen until he was certain that every man who had been accompanying him had exited one-by-one and the door was closed. "Stephen, I…"

"No, Ace. I'm the one who should be sorry." Evergreen sat back down in his chair and removed his glasses, resting his head on his other hand. His eyes did not dare to look up at the agent, instead focusing on the papers scattered across his work area. "I allowed her to go with you and your men. I'm the one responsible for her death." Putting his glasses back on, he picked up a packet titled "SCP-823." After glancing over the document, he turned to the second page and picked up a pen, making a note to update the document on the computer with the latest information regarding his daughter. "How many people have we lost with these retrieval expeditions?"

Ace wrung his hands. "According to recent data, we've lost about fifty percent of the Task Force assigned to explore the site. The majority of them committed suicide hours upon entering." He met Evergreen's eyes as the doctor finished writing and put his pen down. "We've decided to switch from Retrieval to just On-Site Securement to prevent more of these from happening. We haven't recovered anyone from the site since we found your daughter and those six others, anyway."

Evergreen picked up the packet containing the information on SCP-823 again and began to reread the information listed on the first page. After a moment, he suddenly got an idea. "...Why don't we just destroy it?"

Ace's eyes widened, then narrowed with suspicion. "What are you saying, Stephen?"

"Air force strike." By now the doctor was grinning, wild rapture present in his eyes. He held up the paper and pointed to the aerial shot of the wrecked carnival. "Blow up the damn thing. It'll stop whatever led to all of this for good. It's caused us enough trouble already. We don't need it to continue."

Ace thought in silence, trying to take into account everything Doctor Evergreen was telling him. "It's a good suggestion, but...there's a lot we would need to take into account. There are residential areas nearby, and we'll need a really good cover story to explain the explosion. We were lucky our previous one for the initial incident was believable."

Doctor Evergreen continued grinning. "I'll come up with something." He turned to face his computer screen and opened a document to begin typing. In no time at all, his fingers were flying over the keyboard. "I've created many plausible cover stories for other SCP-related events. This one should be no different."

Agent Ace watched Evergreen furiously type away on his computer for a few moments before giving a sigh. He figured it would be best to let the doctor go on with his work. It seemed like there was no stopping him now that the idea was planted in his head. "Alright. I'll leave you to it." It was strange. The agent had thought Evergreen would've taken more time to mourn losing his daughter again. Then again, being a doctor at the SCP Foundation, he must've felt the need to keep working and not stay miserable for long. "See you later, Stephen."

Evergreen did not glance up from his computer as Ace left the room. He continued typing his proposal with extreme eagerness. After a few minutes of nonstop writing, the doctor paused only once to reread some of the information on the packet next to him:

"Item #: SCP-823
Object class: Euclid

"Special Containment Procedures: SCP-823 is to be secured by no fewer than six (6) on-site personnel until such time as decontamination protocols can be established and the artifact in question neutralized. Personnel must respect a twenty meter (20 m) safe zone around the currently established Red (No Entry) Zone at all costs. Any individual, civilian or not, who enters the established Red Zone is to be terminated immediately by sniper fire.

"Should music or piping be heard emanating from within the Red Zone, Foundation personnel on-site are to immediately don protective earplugs and withdraw from their positions to a two kilometer (2 km) perimeter, beyond the currently established Yellow (No Civilian Presence) Zone, and inform Foundation scientific personnel immediately. Following the realignment event, Foundation science personnel will survey the area and determine the boundaries of the new Red and Yellow zones using Procedure 823-1-Alpha.

"Due to the necessity of maintaining auditory alertness, no personal music devices or radios aside from necessary equipment are to be allowed at the observation site.

"SCP-823 is an abandoned theme (amusement) park located in █████, █████. Site was abandoned in ████ after several violent events resulting in the deaths of park attendees. A complete list of said events is included in Supplement 823-01-13, "Civilian Deaths Attributed to SCP-823.

"SCP-823 was finally abandoned after the events of ██-██-████, also known as "Bloody Sunday," when the influence of the artifact in question reached a 20-year peak. Two hundred thirty-one (231) attendees were killed, and another seven (7) injured or maimed."